You wrote this:
Tell me what I made up.
Tell us where I said any such thing?
I thought you were attempting to imply that this embassy thing was pulled out of somebody’s ass just like the WMD threat was. If that’s not what you were implying, then nevermind.
Great!
Basically, our intel tells us there may or may not be an AQ attack in the ME, and maybe even targeting US interests. Correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t that been the AQ daily terrorist outlook in the ME for about oh… how long as AQ been around?
Not only that, but bombs keep going off and terrorists have apparently been stopped but the WH is like, “nope, not enough. Keep the embassies closed. It’s gonna be big, big we tells ya!”
So, we heard some “chatter” between two senior AQ types but our awesome NSA technology doesn’t work outside the US so we figured we’d tell the world about a plan we know nothing about in hopes those AQ guys will pick up the phone and say, “the US didn’t get all the details the first time. Let’s repeat everything really slowly using small easy to translate words so they get it this time.”
Or, the GOP, with their disingenuous whining about Benghazi have forced Obama to overreact and now he’s just hoping we’ll get lucky and catch AQ doing something “big.” They probably aren’t going to cooperate. They seem to be in charge now.
We are their chatter bitches. They chatter, we piss ourselves. The GOP is pleased.
No, you’re incorrect. Saying ‘AQ exists and is planning some stuff’ is different from saying ‘we believe these locations may be threatened in a particular time frame.’
Where are you getting that they are predicting a big attack any second this week? Nobody has said that anywhere. They said they believed something was being planned and wanted to clear people out of harm’s way while they tried to get some of the people involved.
You forgot “the terrorists win.” Looking un-scared is nice, but it’s not as important as actually doing stuff.
Now you’re being obtuse and steering toward disingenuous debate. All the initial reports were suggesting timing of the “big” something, somewhere to coincide with end of Ramadan which is this week.
And I’ll be damned if I have to cite simple stuff for childish tantrums passing as debate…
Yes, that’s exactly what was reported on Sunday. (I think the holiday ended yesterday.) On Sunday it was announced the embassies were being closed for the day because of a potential threat, and that was later extended through this coming Saturday. Since then various details about what was intercepted and what might’ve been in the offing have been reported. levdrakon’s post (and some of BrokenBriton’s) made it sound like the government has repeated and extended that threat over and over, which it hasn’t (it did evacuate some staff in Yemen) and that it keeps telling the public over and over that something’s about to happen somewhere, which it isn’t doing. It’s not hard to spot the difference.
“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”
-Samuel Johnson
– Ambrose Bierce
I belive that if this thread serves any purpose at all it’s a reminder of - even after all these years and all the lies - some people are still reluctant to accept gov is essentially corrupt, morally bankrupt and serves only its own and other vested interests.
And this ‘we’ stuff. Jesus; have a look around you, the absent guys, the guys with limbs missing, the people now a little vacant behind the eyes … 10 years ago they all believed in the ‘we’ thing as well.
It’s also a reminder that no matter how much people roll their eyes and yell about conspiracies, some of us are going to ask for facts and sound reasoning.
It’s also a reminder that some people think it is worth wagering other people’s lives over their own suspicions of government. If they are right and the government is wrong, then they can gloat all they like. If they are wrong and people die, well… that’s the price of… liberty? And all because, as even sven so perfectly stated, there is an irrational resistance to closing some office buildings for a few days.
No. There’s a perfectly rational resistance to claiming that closing a few office buidlings in a country where terrorist attacks are a daily occurence and where USA drones roam the skies killing people and then saying ‘trust us, this all proves how we need to bug the crap out of you all 24/7 so stop asking questions and getting upset when we lie straightfaced to Congress about it. Meanwhile would you like to buy one of our magic, tiger-repelling rocks?’.
Nobody said that.
Yes, wouldn’t they be nice. Have you got any facts and “sound reasoning” because “some of us” believe the only fact in evidence is the NSAs mass surveillance of the people its allegedly serving?
Already posted. You can read and argue what we know or don’t know, but I’m not repeating myself.
I think we went over this once. Let’s review… again!
First of all, facts and reasoning is not a sufficient set to describe logical constructs – what many fail to mention is that set of axiomatic assumptions (or, self-evident truths that don’t require examination) is needed as the basis upon which facts are processed using logical reasoning. And not only that - in the world of logic, an axiomatic assumption is the hardest and most controversial element that arouses most discussion (e.g. Government is there to protect me from enemy). Facts are easier to deal with as they inherently allow two states – true and false, and then, logical reasoning which is, actually, simplest of all – it’s very easy to quickly comprehend and notice if it’s faulty. But, logical reasoning process tends to take most of the debate time and space e.g. infinite number of named fallacies is nothing but easy to observe errors in logical reasoning and many try that first to disprove whatever it is you are claiming.
Second, if we break down this particular case along the basic elements of logical thinking one axiomatic assumption keeps popping up – Government would not make stuff up when it comes to population safety from enemy threat, maybe other countries population they do, but certainly not their own.
And third, what does this have to do with the facts – if one has a belief in axiomatic assumption mentioned above then, one will never realize that Government is the one providing you with all the facts and these facts are true ONLY because of that axiom. There is no way to verify true/false value of those facts for any of us – I’d argue actually that fragmentation and hierarchical nature of Government security apparatus there is no way even for Government itself to verify the end to end chain of facts from its origin to its use by some Senator on TV show (it’s also funny how we all know that words are constructed so carefully for other uses but we seem to not question words and phrases used when Government speaks about national security).
So, for those who TL;DR’d – your first step in approaching this issue is to face your own axioms that are being implanted deep into your conciseness and see where that takes you. For me, personally, it was a horrible and cathartic experience and it mostly is - something almost akin to red and blue pill from the Matrix movie and I have so many examples and some of those I shared in different threads - even today Serbs who live in my hometown believe in the news from media published in 1992 that a well-known obstetrician who happened to be a Bosnian Muslim made Serb boys infertile by crashing their little balls with his bare hands as soon as he pulled them from a Serb-mother womb. And, in all seriousness, why would they not believe that – it was on radio news, on TV and in print with all the facts there for all to see; they even printed doctor’s photo so you can recognize his face and the news was released by local police department who did investigation. Totally understandable, if you are a Serb, of course.
Disclosure – it may be that I am deeply impacted by a personal experience that I cannot escape the way I process information so I may need professional help. Which is interesting because my day job consists mostly of questioning assumptions and doing analysis work to prove/disprove them.
Unless they are not Americans, right?
Imagine how many people would still be alive today - including good number of Americans and those who committed suicide in last 10 years – if Americans were a bit more suspicious of their Government in 2003.
Yes they did.
Cites, please.